Ep 69-Genital Mutilation Disguised as Love Surgery

A surgeon tells you everything went fine then you spend years in pain, ashamed, and confused because the truth never made it into your chart. We dig into the case of Dr James Burt of Dayton, Ohio, the physician behind “love surgery,” a set of experimental genital procedures he performed on thousands of women, often without informed consent. The details are as horrifying as they are important.

We walk through how Burt sold his theory, how he used authority and taboo to isolate patients, and how institutions that should have protected women instead protected themselves. Hospitals restricted liability rather than stopping him, medical culture discouraged doctors from reporting other doctors, and the state medical board dragged its feet until national media made silence impossible. The story raises hard questions about medical ethics, patient safety, hospital credentialing, and what real accountability looks like when harm happens behind operating room doors.

If you care about informed consent, medical malpractice, and how trust can be weaponised in healthcare, hit play now. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a rating or review so more listeners can find the show.

Resources: 

https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/clinical/diagnostic-testing/brahms/prenatal-screening/preeclampsia-screening/clinical-solutions.html 

https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/1993/1993-Ohio-178.pdf 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Burt 

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/11/us/charges-against-doctor-bring-ire-and-questions.html 

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/26/us/doctor-loses-practice-over-genital-surgery.html 

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/09/us/doctor-is-accused-of-immoral-tests.html 

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/22/us/article-964091-no-title.html 

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1990/03/05/Dr-Love-files-250-million-suit-against-CBS/9944636613200/ 

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-06-22-mn-936-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-04-19-ca-139-story.html

https://abcnews.com/Health/ohio-woman-writes-book-love-doctor-mutilated-sex/story?id=17897317 

https://pegalislawgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ABC-NEWS-Dec-2012-Sandy.pdf 

https://patient-safety.com/burt/ 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23179235/ 

https://nursingclio.org/2021/01/28/upholding-first-do-no-harm-a-review-of-sarah-b-rodriguezs-the-love-surgeon/ 

https://meridian.allenpress.com/jmr/article/107/1/37/465209/The-Love-Surgeon-A-Story-of-Trust-Harm-and-the 

https://lithub.com/the-cautionary-tale-of-the-love-surgeon/ 

https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/1996/1996-ohio-107.pdf 

https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/janet-phillips-v-james-890952408 

https://www.scribd.com/document/859350481/The-Love-Surgeon-A-Story-of-Trust-Harm-and-the-Limits-of-Medical-Regulation-Direct-Download 

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/m6qodz/til_gynaecologist_james_c_burt_from_dayton_ohio/ 

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/female-circumcision-and-clitoridectomy-in-the-united-states/james-burt-and-the-surgery-of-love-196689/63B2364BBECF307F1002FCC6E060D826 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Amanda. Hello, Donna. Hello. How the heck are you?

SPEAKER_03 0:19

I am very well. Um, how are you?

SPEAKER_02 0:24

I'm great. I am just loving this whole fact that America's figuring out not only how fun countries like Scotland and Norway are, but like the World Cup is a thing. And yeah, so it's not like the World Series. It really is the world. And it's just like this big playground. They've come over for this great sleepover, and I'm just loving all of the social media, like Boston running out of beer, and Norwegians like rowing their ways up escalators and like

World Cup Chaos And Catching Up

SPEAKER_02 0:55

just like the whole world just getting along. And I just love it. I love it. Those videos have been really funny to watch. Yeah. Yeah. Long may that continue. We need to have them over every year. I know, right? I like the ones that are like about the Scots putting cones on statues. Mom, can we keep them?

SPEAKER_03 1:14

I these ones are not popping up on mine. Most of mine are like they go to the grocery store and they're making fun of us, but oh yeah, because everything's like, yeah, why do you sell a 10-pound log of hamburger?

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Like I know. I mean, those are pretty much.

SPEAKER_03 1:29

I mean, it is, but listen, listen, you buy the 10-pound logs, you portion it out yourself, and you freeze the ones and you pull them out when you need them.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Mm-hmm. Or you feed a whole farm full of people. I don't, I don't know. That's a lot. That's a lot of beef. Or a farm family, sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

So yeah. Um, I don't think we have corrections from last time. I don't think so. Haven't heard from anyone, haven't heard from Rich. So just kidding, Rich. We must be good. Or maybe you have reached out and I'm behind on answering. I don't know. If so, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

This week went by like a blur. I haven't heard anything that was anyone that was clamoring for competition. Well, good.

SPEAKER_03 2:18

Well, then I guess just a quick question for the Alley cats. When was the last time you treated yourself to something that actually improved your everyday life? Jenna, when one for you? Not since too long to remember. Not in a hot exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So for us, you know, quality sleep is one of those things that's easy to overlook until you finally experience the difference. That is why we, Jenna and I, love cozy earth. Their bamboo sheet sets are designed with cooling, moisture-wicking fabric that's perfect for anyone who tends to sleep hot. They're incredibly soft, right out of the package, and somehow get even softer over time.

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Cozy Earth Sponsor Break

SPEAKER_03 3:28

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SPEAKER_02 3:48

She just needs some cozier thog bed, and then she wouldn't have to do that.

SPEAKER_03 3:52

She's like, why isn't this blanket bamboo? Okay. All of my resources will be posted in the show notes. I did not think there were any trigger warnings other than this is deeply just disturbing in general. So yeah. Anyway, I guess just buckle up because the whole thing's click it or tick it.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Here we go.

SPEAKER_03 4:17

Okay, here we go. Let's start with this sentence. She woke in pieces. First, the pain, a low, burning ache radiating from somewhere deep inside her body, somewhere she had no name for. Then the fluorescent light, white and unforgiving, pressing against her eyelids. Then the smell. Antiseptic, gauze, blood. She had gone to sleep trusting her doctor. She had signed a consent form for hysterectomy, a surgeon to address the heavy bleeding and cramping that had plagued her for months. That is all she had agreed to. That was all she knew. But when the anesthesia wore off and

A Patient Wakes Up Wrong

SPEAKER_03 5:01

the fog began to lift, nothing felt right. Her body was wrong. Not just sore from surgery, just wrong. Swollen in places she couldn't explain, stitched in ways she couldn't understand. Pain in parts of her anatomy that had nothing to do with the hysterectomy. She pressed the call button, and a nurse came, then another. She saw their faces and something in their expressions terrified her more than the pain. They looked at each other, and one of them looked away. No one said a word about what had been done to her. So she asked the doctor, and he smiled. He told her everything was fine, that she was healing beautifully, and her muscles just needed to rejuvenate. Of course. She believed him. Why not? He was the one with the diploma on the wall.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Oh my god, I'm horrified. I don't know what's gonna happen, but it doesn't sound good.

SPEAKER_03 5:53

It would be four years before she learned the truth. Four years of pain, of infections, of incontinence, of a marriage strained to breaking. Four years before another doctor looked at what had been done to her body and told her she had never been told. While she was unconscious on that operating table, her gynecologist had redesigned her genitalia without her knowledge or consent. What? He circumcised her clitoris, reconstructed her vagina, and rearranged the most intimate architecture of her body to a theory he had invented himself. A theory no medical institution had ever validated, no peer had ever endorsed, and no patient had ever requested. His name was Dr. James Burt, and he practiced in Dayton, Ohio. He called his invention love surgery. He claimed it would make women better at sex. He performed it on thousands. Let me underline that quick. Thousands of women over more than two decades. Most of them never knew. This is the story of the women he harmed, the institution that protected him, which is absolutely wild, and the system that let it happen for 22 years. This is the story of what happens when a doctor decides he knows more about the women whose bodies he holds in his hands.

unknown 7:28

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Are you ready? No, I'm not ready. Amanda, I want to scream and cry at the same time. What on earth?

SPEAKER_03 7:37

The whole again, the whole thing's just a trigger warning. Yeah. I hate this. James Burt Jr. was born on August 29th, 1921 at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio. His father, Benjamin, was a superintendent at the Dayton Manufacturing Company, and his mother, Stella, love that name, was a homemaker. It was a respectable family situation in a respectable Midwestern city, the kind of family that produces doctors, lawyers, men who joined the Rotary Club and shook hands firmly at church on Sundays. And in 1939, Bert enrolled at Auburn University, where he met his first wife, Lucretia Perry. He graduated from Alabama

Who Dr James Burt Was

SPEAKER_03 8:25

Polytechnic Institute in 1942, then earned his medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine in 1945, at the right bowl age at 23. His training was impeccable on paper. Internship at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, service in the United States Air Force Medical Corps, residencies at the Chicago Lying Inn Hospital and Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. On June 21st, 1951, the state of Ohio issued James Burt his medical license. And here's a detail that would matter enormously in the decades to come. He was never board certified in obstetrics and gynecology. Board certification in the American medical system is not legally required, but so you can practice a specialty without it, but it signals that a physician has met the standards set by the specialty's own professional body. And so Burt never met those standards at all. He was a gynecologist by practice, not a surgeon by credential. And yet he would spend the next 35 years performing surgical operations that lasted as long as nine hours.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Nine hours?

SPEAKER_03 9:39

Nine. Nine.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

He returned to Dayton in 1951 and set up an obstetrics and gynecology practice in the city where he had been born. He rose fast, and within a few years, he was one of Dayton's most successful and wealthiest obstetricians. Women came to him specifically, they chose him because James Furt had a quality unusual for male physicians in the 1950s. He appeared to listen.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

How sad is that?

SPEAKER_02 10:13

The bar's so low.

SPEAKER_03 10:15

Whoa, the bar's in the basement. He seemed to take women's health concerns seriously. He talked to his patients, looked them in the eye, and in an era where most male doctors were patronizing to patients who were women, he seemed different. So his reputation of the doctor who listens to women would become the foundation of everything that followed. It was the weapon he never had to sharpen. Women trusted him because he seemed to care. But if you look closely at James Burt's personal life, the cracks were already visible. He married Lucretia before medical school, and together the two had two sons and a daughter. But in late 1952, the couple separated. Then Burt did something revealing to, I don't know, who he is as a person. While the divorce was still pending in Ohio, he traveled to Mexico, obtained a secret divorce without Lucretia's knowledge, and immediately crossed the border into Indiana to marry his second wife, Jerry. He already had her lined up. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was an act of deception and control, dissolving one marriage in secret to start another on his own terms. Jerry would later file for divorce, reporting to the court that Bert had, quote, struck and physically abused her from time to time, end quote. Not surprised. The marriage ended in July of 1966, and the judge rejected Bert's efforts to deny her alimony. Good. Yeah, good. His third wife, Linda, married him in 1967. So, you know, not long after. They lived lavishly, buying properties in El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and a condominium in Vale, Colorado. Well, Linda, you know, she eventually left him for a ski instructor around 1973.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

So Karma! Get it, Linda!

SPEAKER_03 12:13

Then came Joan Woodward, his fourth wife, roughly 25 years his junior.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Of course. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 12:21

Joan became central to Bert's practice and his identity. She accompanied him to medical society dinners, where, according to colleagues who were present, she would be, quote, physically all over her husband, talking a lot and bragging about how many orgasms she enjoyed.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Oh, as you do at a dinner party in polite company. What the heck?

SPEAKER_03 12:41

Or any any dinner party. Really any party. But most especially close. Yeah. And also just like 25 years his junior too, like just feels like very like I don't know, it's just ick. So Bert himself took to wearing gold chains and long fur coats. Like, I don't know if he was trying to look like pimp daddy or something, but she was draped in diamonds and they were performing a kind of sexual theater in public. And the medical community of Dayton, Ohio, yeah, they watched it all with mounting discomfort. I bet. See what I did there?

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Yeah. I see you. I see you.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

So here was the thing about Dr. James Burt that everyone in medicine knew, but no one said out loud. The other doctors completely avoided him. Of course. Yeah. Dr. Walter Realing Jr., a Dayton physician who began practice in the 1970s, later described how physicians and their wives deliberately refused to sit with the Burts at dinner. They were like, I don't blame them. Like, nose goes, not it, not no, not it.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

I don't want to deal with this. I had to sit with them last time.

SPEAKER_03 13:52

Yeah. So Bert had no close colleagues, no professional friendships. He was pretty isolated, not because he was shunned for wrongdoing, not yet, but because something about the man just made people around him uneasy. He didn't seek friendships with them, and no one sought one out with him. And isn't that just interesting that like everyone gravitated toward him, like patient care wise, because he was so warm and this and and like personal life, everyone's like, you're fucking weirdo.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Yeah. I mean, go with your gut on this. And I think that the honestly, the bar was so low, women were so used to being just like, you don't get to ask questions, you're the weaker sex. I know what's best for you. That if someone actually listened, they were just immediately convinced that this is somebody who's gonna take care of them, and that's so sad.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

So sad. In 1966, William Masters and Virginia Johnson published Human Sexual Response, a landmark book that, among other things, dedicated an entire chapter to the physiology of the clitoris. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

In 1966, no less.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

Yeah, really ahead of times here. The book transformed how physicians and the public understood female sexuality. It was rigorous, clinical, and profoundly influential. James Burt, shocking, read it and took away exactly the wrong lesson. Oh, of course. Where Masters and Johnson saw complexity in the psychological, relational, emotional dimensions of sexuality, Burt saw

The Pseudoscience Behind “Love Surgery”

SPEAKER_03 15:25

a mechanical problem with a mechanical solution. Of course. Thank God. Yeah, he was a physician and he thought like one, you guys. If the clitoris was the center of the female sexual pleasure, and if the anatomy of the average woman didn't position it for maximum stimulation during missionary position intercourse, then the answer was obvious. At least it was obvious to him. You just you redesign the woman. Yep, God got it wrong. So yeah, yeah. He got it wrong, so he graced us with bird's presence to fix it. So that that was the entirety of his idea. Women's bodies, in Bert's view, were structurally deficient for heterosexual intercourse, and he was the man who could fix them.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

The ego on this guy.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

Yeah, yeah. It she big. He would later put it in writing in 1975. He and Joan published a book called Surgery of Love. Rose. In it, Bert wrote a sentence that would follow him for the rest of his life. And the sentence reads, Women are structurally inadequate for intercourse. This is a pathological condition amenable by surgery.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

I'm literally just trying, putting my hand over my mouth so that I don't interrupt you 50,000 times, but my jaw is on the floor. Okay, carry on.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he claimed his surgery would transform the woman into, and this is his phrase, horny little mice.

unknown 17:02

What?

SPEAKER_02 17:06

That's what every woman wants. They want to be a horny little mouse, and oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

Wow. Yeah. He claimed he claimed it would eliminate domestic violence. So ignorant. So we've got that going for us. Yeah. Before the surgery, he said, 17% of his patients reported being beaten by their husbands. Afterward, he claimed zero percentage. What? Like, did you run a study? What?

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Yeah, well, of course it's a woman's fault, right? Yeah. You gotta fix the woman, and then men, men don't need to abuse them anymore. My god, I hate this guy so much.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Yeah. He believed that if women had better sex, their marriages would be saved, their husbands would stop hitting them, and the American family would be restored. And then there was his line, buried in the pages of the book. Okay, this is I know this is laughable because it's just so ridiculous, but this is not funny. This is the line in the book. The difference between rape and rapture is salesmanship. So let's just let that simmer for a second.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 18:20

Like this is how that man thought. This is disgusting. Disgusting.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

No clue and very dangerous attitude. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 18:30

In publishing a book with these statements. I hate him. Yep. He sought validation from the scientific establishments. He tried to get William Masters himself to endorse his work, and Masters refused. No peer-reviewed journal published his findings. No medical institution replicated his results. The Montgomery County Medical Society issued a statement criticizing love surgery. Insurance companies stopped covering claims related to the procedure, and colleagues at the other Dayton hospitals worked behind the scenes to deny Burt surgical privileges. By the late 1970s, only one hospital in Dayton would still let him operate. And that was St. Elizabeth Medical Center, a Catholic hospital, and that was the only door still open to him, and it would stay open for another decade. Shame on them. So let's talk about what this love surgery actually involved. And to do that, we have to rewind back to the mid-1950s when Bert first began experimenting. An epesiotomy is a routine obstetric procedure. It's an incision that's made from the vaginal opening toward the rectum during childbirth to prevent uncontrolled tearing as the baby's head passes through. And after delivery, the incision is stitched close. In the 1950s, this was so standard that physicians rarely discuss the details with patients. A woman was under anesthesia, that baby was delivered, the stitches replaced, she woke up and was told everything was fine. So Bert began quietly

What The Procedure Actually Did

SPEAKER_03 20:05

altering how he repaired those epesiotomies, adding extra stitches, tightening the vaginal opening, rearranging tissues. And the women didn't know. They were unconscious. They woke up sore, which was normal after childbirth, as we know. No one told them anything had been added. And because no one examines the specifics of an episiotomy repair, no one noticed. And so this went on for years. In 1966, he formalized what he was doing into a named procedure, calling it love surgery. Or when he wanted it to sound clinical, he called it plastic surgical postural lateral rifrication, extension, vulvo, vaginal plasty.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Catchy.

SPEAKER_03 20:50

Okay. His own consent form calls it, quote, surgical redesign of the female coital area, end quote. The full love surgery involved multiple simultaneous alterations to a woman's genitalia. I'm so sorry if you can hear this dinging on my dryer just stopped. It's so happy that the clothes are dried. So clitoral circumcision is the removal of the clitoral hood, which is the protective tissue covering the clitoris, supposedly to expose it for greater stimulation. Vaginal relocation is physically repositioning the vaginal opening to bring it closer to the clitoris, based on Burt's theory that this would ensure clitoral stimulation during missionary position intercourse. And vaginal tightening. So he added extra stitches to make the vaginal canal smaller. Perineal reconstruction, building up or rearranging tissues between the anus and the vagina, cutting muscles, part of the pelvic floor, rear. Directing of the labia. I mean, this is kind of hard to read, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

I mean, at this point, you're like you're like a patchwork quilt. Like you can't just decide, oh, well, I'm gonna put an opening to something over here. I mean, yeah. There oh my, I have so many questions, uncomfortable questions on all this, but it's horrific. He mutilated these women.

SPEAKER_03 22:24

Yeah, yep. He even changed the angles and the lengths of some of the vaginal canals itself. So so when combined with a hysterectomy or other procedure, these surgeries lasted as long as nine hours. Nine hours on the operating table for a woman who had consented to almost none of it.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

You don't know, you just accept there's no Google. Unless you had a sister or a mother or somebody who could say, why was it gonna take him nine? It took me two, you know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

Anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Gross.

SPEAKER_03 22:53

Um, yeah. So so Bert used two primary methods, and the first was piggybacking. So a woman would come in for a delivery or hysterectomy or bladder repair, and she would be put under general anesthesia, and Bert would perform the procedure she had consented to, and then while she was still unconscious, he would perform love surgery. I don't know why I feel like I have to say it like that, but I just see all I could do. She would wake up and be told nothing beyond everything went fine. The second was misdirection. When women came to him with legitimate complaints of cramping, incontinence, heavy periods, etc., he would recommend additional procedures described vaguely as cosmetic things or bladder repairs.

Piggybacking Surgeries And Misdirection

SPEAKER_03 23:36

But he never disclosed what he actually planned to do, and this isolated them by actively warning patients against seeing other doctors. He told them that a pelvic examination by another physician could tear his surgical work and cause life-threatening hemorrhaging. Oh, evil. One patient told the Dayton Daily News that Bert warned her she would, quote, bleed to death in the car on the way home, end quote, if another doctor examined her. And she believed him. He operated on her 18 times, trying to repair the damage he had done. Eighteen times! I know your jaws already on the floor, but be ready to pick it out of the basement. So are you ready? Uh-uh. Uh-uh. This the scale of this is staggering. Bert's own records, cited in a November 1988 Dayton Daily News article, stated that more than 4,500 operations were performed between 1966 and 1977 alone. So an 11-year span. And he operated for 22 years total. So some estimates place the number of total patients that he mutilated as high as 9,000. Oh my gosh. Attorney Lee Samble, who would eventually represent 42 of the women in lawsuits against Bert, put it bluntly: quote, he never did the same surgery twice on anybody because he was experimenting and in fact didn't know what he was doing.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Oh my God. This is unreal.

SPEAKER_03 25:04

I know. The consequences of the outcomes were catastrophic. Women who were who underwent Bert's procedures experienced chronic, debilitating pain during intercourse, or inability to have intercourse at all. Recurring vaginal and bladder infections that lasted for years, loss of bladder control requiring daily pads, self-cathetization, or both, bowel complications from disruptive tissue that was reconfigured, loss of sexual sensations, depression, shame, psychological trauma so profound that many of the women couldn't even bring themselves to describe what had happened to them for many decades. Their marriages collapsed, and women who had been healthy and sexually active before Bert's interventions found themselves unable to be intimate with their partners at all. The surgery that was supposed to save marriages actually destroyed them. Dr. Bradley Busico, a Cincinnati physician, would eventually treat 150 women for injuries caused by the procedures attempting to undo what one man had done. On November 4th, 1981, Janet Phillips went to St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Dayton for a total hysterectomy. She had been experiencing heavy periods, spotting, and pain during intercourse. Bert told her that she had ovarian cancer, so she signed a consent for hysterectomy. Only the hysterectomy. And she was in the hospital for 11 days afterwards. Multiple times she woke to find nurses gathered around her bedside, visibly upset. Their expressions terrified her, but no one explained. No one decided what had been done, and she nearly fainted the first time she tried to get out of bed. She had constant pain, could not control her bladder, developed chronic infections, and experienced agonizing

Four Women’s Stories And Lasting Harm

SPEAKER_03 26:54

pain during intercourse. When she told Bert, he said, Don't worry, everything's fine. You are going to be okay. He told her to let her muscles rejuvenate. When she said sex was painful, he said to keep trying, even if it's painful. When she persisted, he said, her husband must be bigger than I thought. The bug.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Oh, he's designing vaginas for her husband's girth now or size? What the heck?

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Oh, I should do that. When she asked to see her urologist, he said, I've got you on the road to healing, and warned her that another doctor could tear his surgery and cause hemorrhaging that would kill her. So she remained his patient for another three years. That was a three years of wearing pads every day, which sounds horrible, taking antibiotics for recurring infections, also horrible, and obviously daily pain, all horrible. Terrible. In December 1985, Janet finally saw another physician, Dr. Michael Clark. After her initial examination, he told her that in addition to the hysterectomy that she had consented to, she had undergone clitoral circumcision and vaginal reconstruction. Procedures she had never been told about, and procedures she never agreed to. I trusted him, she later said. He was the doctor. In 1984, Cheryl Sexton Dillon was 36 years old. She was a vocational teacher with three children, and she was in her second marriage, which she described as the best thing that had happened in my life. She went to Bert needing minor bladder surgery and recommended a hysterectomy, to which she consented. Cheryl woke from a nine-hour operation where Bert had relocated her vagina and removed her clitoral hood. I thought I would die, she said. The pain was unlike anything I have ever experienced in places I couldn't understand. Ordinary daily activities like sitting down or even wearing pants became impossible. Having sex with her husband also became impossible, and despite her understanding husband, her 12-year marriage eventually collapsed. She underwent three separate corrective surgeries, but the damage was permanent. When she finally sought help at the University of Cincinnati, the examining physician called in a nurse and said, Have you ever seen anything like this? He told Cheryl that her vagina had been repositioned and she had been circumcised. He said he had never seen it anywhere, done anywhere except in African tribes. Another doctor described her genitals as looking like a fillet fish. Cheryl confronted Bert directly and he looked her in the eye and said, What are you talking about? As of 2012, nearly three decades after the surgery, Cheryl was still living in daily pain. I still can't do the things I used to do, she said. It's still debilitating. In February 1982, Jimmy Dean Browning went to Burt for what she was told was treatment for a bladder condition. He told her he would do cosmetic things to improve her sex life. What she got was unauthorized vaginal reconstruction surgery that, in the language of Ohio Supreme Court, quote, reconstructed her genital organs to an unnatural and bizarre anatomical configuration, end quote. She spent months with an indwelling urinary catheter. She had urinary incontinence that persisted for years, and constant bladder pain. In addition, bowel problems, inability to have sexual intercourse without extreme pain. And then Bert's associate, Dr. Blue, performed 16 additional surgeries on her between 1981 and 1986. Surgeries that culminated in the removal of her right kidney. Jimmy Dean Browning didn't learn the full truth of what Bert had done to her until six years after the surgery when she watched a CBS news broadcast in her living room in October of 1988, which we will get to later on. In January 1985, Cody Mitchell came to Bert for pelvic pain and bladder problems. Bert explained the surgery as lifting the bladder out of the way to relieve bruising during sex. She signed a consent form, but didn't understand what the words on it actually meant. And within months, her condition had deteriorated dramatically. She lost bladder control, developed severe infections. She experienced a sensation she described as tearing loose. And roughly four months after the surgery, she discovered something that no one had warned her about. Her vagina had been sewn nearly shut. What? She could no longer have sex, penetrative sex. And when she tried, she bled. She never resumed sexual intercourse. And in December 1988, Dr. Bradley Busico examined Coney Mitchell and performed corrective surgery. He told her she had been surgically mutilated. These are the stories of only four women Bert used as experiments on the operating table. And as I've already pointed out, there were thousands more. Oh, geez. Well, if you all feel a little gaggy like me, let's head into a chart note because it's gonna feel like a bright Christmas present. Chart note! Chart note, thank God you're here. Welcome to the chart note segment where we learn about what's happening in medicine and healthcare. A new FDA cleared blood test may help clinicians identify which pregnant patients with hypertension are at the highest risk of developing severe preeclampsia before symptoms worsen. The test, known as the preclara ratio, measures two placental biomarkers, which are soluble FMS like tyrosine kinase 1 or SFI or LT1, and a bunch of other scientific

Chart Note On Preeclampsia Blood Test

SPEAKER_03 33:20

things with blood work that I know nothing about, but you can click my resource and read about it yourself. Researchers have found that as pre-calampsia develops, these levels rise while the PIGF levels fall, creating a ratio that can signal placental dysfunction and increasing disease severity. The test is intended for pregnant patients between 23 and 34 weeks gestation who are hospitalized with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, including gestational hypertension, chronic hypertension, or suspected preclampsia. Using an FDA-approved cutoff value of 40, clinicians can better determine which patients are unlikely to progress to severe disease within the next two weeks and which may require closer monitoring, specialist consultation, or preparation for early delivery. Fun fact, I had preeclampsia and an early delivery. So this is very exciting for me. And for, I mean, every everybody, but I feel like preeclampsia is not talked about very much. So the approval was based on findings from a study and the largest perspective US trial evaluating the biomarker ratio. Investigators reported that the test achieved a sensitivity of 94% and a negative predictive value of 96%, meaning it was highly effective at identifying patients who would not go on to develop severe preeclampsia in the short term. The test also outperformed standard clinical assessment alone, demonstrating significantly better predictive accuracy. Nice. Researchers found that patients who developed severe preeclampsia had biomarker ratios approximately 40 times higher than those who did not. Elevated ratios were also associated with a greater likelihood of maternal complications, adverse neonatal outcomes, and delivery within two weeks of testing. Preeclampsia remains one of the leading causes of maternal and infant illness and death worldwide, making early identification absolutely critical. Experts hope that incorporating biomarker-based screening into clinical practice will improve risk stratification, reduce unnecessary hospitalizations, support more personalized patient counseling, and ultimately lead to better outcomes for both mothers and babies. Amen. Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

Yeah. I didn't know that it was one of the leading causes of maternal and infant illness and death worldwide. I knew it was really serious, but wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:53

I didn't need to do more of that. Numbers off the top of my head, but like pre-clampsia stuff pops up on my social media now, right? Because they know what you talk about and you do and whatever. And fun fact, pre-clampsia awareness month is the same month as Better Speech and Hearing Month. And oh, so I had seen some facts come up about how many deaths annually. It's crazy, it's so sad. But luckily, me and my babe are good. And like I had no pre-existing conditions that would ever indicate that I would I would have this. So I mean it's scary, it can happen to anybody. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

No, I think we need more awareness. So yeah. Thank you for bringing that up.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

Yes. Are you ready to go back to the story?

SPEAKER_02 36:40

Oh god, we have to. I'm so angry.

SPEAKER_03 36:42

I really don't want to, but because I mean you're just gonna keep getting more angry. That'll be your warning. Okay. Okay.

unknown 36:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 36:54

Okay. Back to the story.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

This man hates women, right? Like, okay, we're gonna talk about it at the end, but like, okay, yeah, carry on.

SPEAKER_03 37:01

Okay. So I'm sure we're all wondering how this could go on for 22 years. And the answer is not that no one knew because people did. The nurses knew, other doctors knew, and you know what? The hospital knew. The medical board even knew. The answer is that every institution that could have stopped him chose not to, and the reasons reveal something far more disturbing than one rogue physician. So let's start with the hospital itself. St. Elizabeth Medical Center was a Catholic hospital in Dayton, Ohio. And by the late 1970s, it was the only hospital where Bert still had surgical privileges.

How The Hospital And Board Looked Away

SPEAKER_03 37:38

Other Dayton hospitals had denied him, as I mentioned earlier, but St. Elizabeth kept their doors open. And they didn't do it blindly, shockingly. In 1979, a full decade before he was stopped, the executive committee of St. Elizabeth's medical staff took an action that would become the most damning piece of evidence in the entire case. They created a consent form designed specifically for Bert's patients, requiring them to be signed before admission. And it said in writing that Bert's procedure was, and I quote, this is what it said, not documented by ordinary standards of scientific reporting and publication. And that it was not a generally accepted procedure and had not been duplicated by other investigators, and had been detailed only in non-scientific literature. The final sentence said the executive committee of the medical staff considers the aforementioned procedure an unproven, non-standard practice of gynecology. Oh my gosh. So in 1979, St. Elizabeth Medical Center put in writing that James Burt's surgery was unproven, non-standard, undocumented, and unreplicated. They acknowledged this on paper and they created a form to document their own awareness. So what? They still let him operate for eight more years.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

Why? And what patient is gonna understand this? Right. Was this well explained to them? So they had them, they're like, we want to be off the hook, so we'll create something in small print, and then you want to have a baby, just sign here. Like who's gonna read it? You don't want to read that. I'm not gonna read it. Why are they letting him continue?

SPEAKER_03 39:29

It's just a big cover your ass, but why? Just make him stop. Why cover his ass? Wait, get a better surgeon. Come on.

unknown 39:36

Ah.

SPEAKER_03 39:37

The Dayton Daily News in November 1988 reported the answer that everyone already suspected. Bert was the hospital's cash cow. That's why. Yep. What's the answer to everything evil? Money. Yep. He was a high volume surgeon, generating substantial revenue. Patient safety, a medical accountability organization that has documented this case extensively, put it this way. When the hospital and the doctors around him became concerned about what he was doing, the action they took was to limit their own liabilities, not to protect the patients. The special consent form wasn't designed to protect the women, it was designed to protect the hospital.

SPEAKER_02 40:19

Okay. I can see who was the cash cow, but also if you're doing nine-hour surgeries, how does that make you a cash cow? Unless he had codes, he was charging them for all the interior design work.

SPEAKER_03 40:34

Well, and also it wasn't covered by insurance, so probably all cash pay. Yeah. So now let's touch on the nurses. They saw everything. They were in the operating room during the nine-hour surgeries, they were at Janet Phillips' bedside, their faces stricken with visible distress. They watched women writhe in pain from injuries that had nothing to do with the surgeries listed on their charts. One nurse who assisted Bert's surgeries later explained, Nurses do not see how much pain patients are in afterwards. They don't know there is anything to report. They forget about anything outward they might have seen and move on to the next patient. She said she was dazzled by him and didn't understand what he was doing. But a police officer who investigated the case told a starkly different story. He said the break came when a nurse retired and finally spoke. Quote, it was learned that Bert chose victims who were weak and would be unlikely to retaliate, end quote, the officer said. The socially connected wives of bank presidents were safe. It took a private investigator hired by one of the wealthier victims to persuade that retired nurse to talk by assuring her that since she was retired, her career could no longer be destroyed. The medical board, so this one shocked me. Ohio's state medical board was throughout the 1970s and 1980s notoriously ineffective. Cleveland Plain Dealer investigations documented that the board referred 80% of complaints back to local medical societies, organizations that had no formal disciplinary power. It was a closed loop. A complaint went in and disappeared. Formal complaints about Bert's practices had been filed beginning as early as the mid-1970s, and at least one local gynecologist filed a complaint with both the County Medical Society and the hospital directly, but nothing happened. The medical board took no meaningful action for over a decade, and it would take a national television broadcast and the personal intervention of the governor of Ohio to make the board act. Underneath it all was something structural, something we talk about often on the pod, something bigger than any one hospital or board, and that's the medical culture. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was considered a serious breach of personal etiquette to publicly question another physician's judgment. Doctors could refuse to refer patients to a colleague. They could avoid him socially, they could work quietly to restrict his hospital privileges, but filing a formal complaint, go to the police, testify against them in court? No. Unfortunately, that was the unforgivable act. Not the surgery, but the speaking up. The medical profession calls itself self-regulating, which means physicians are responsible for policing other physicians. And when James Burt's colleagues were confronted with what he was doing, they policed their own discomfort rather than his behaviors. They practiced avoidance, whispered their thoughts, and just shook their heads, but they did not stop him. Shame. Shame on them. And speaking of shame, the women, they were isolated by shame. Burt's threats and the taboo of discussing genital injuries had no one to turn to. They did try everything. They went to the police, but they refused to ask. Act, as one investigator lady later explained, in medicine that crimes occur while the patient is unconscious, so there's no witnesses. They went to local prosecutors, who also declined to investigate. So they went to the hospital, and of course, no meaningful response from there either. They went to other doctors and encountered the white wall of silence, where colleagues who would not testify against one of their own. So they went to the media. But in Dayton newspapers, they ignored them too. Initially, every door seemed to be closed and sealed shut, and every authority had turned them away. So they decided to do what the institutions wouldn't. They found each other, banded together, and escalated things themselves. On October 29th, 1988, CBS aired a segment telling the story of Dr. James Burt and the women he had harmed. Cheryl Sexton Dillon appeared on camera. Sandra Shocky of New Lebanon, Ohio, described being operated on without her consent and compared Burt's procedures to Auschwitz concentration camp experiments. Burt himself appeared defending his practice. That broadcast changed everything. It triggered a chain reaction of talk shows, magazine articles, and newspaper investigations. The Dayton Daily News, which had previously overlooked the story, launched its own reporting. National attention crashed into a local secret that had been kept for

CBS Exposé And License Surrender

SPEAKER_03 45:28

two decades. Bert's response? He called it a conspiracy of lies. But the only conspiracy present, if there was one, had been the silence. And this would be the end of it. Cheryl Sexton Dillon explained why she went on national television. She said, We said we had to stop this man. I don't want to die young and have my daughter go to the same doctor. Ohio Governor Richard Celeste learned of the situation in the wake of the broadcast. He personally contacted the Ohio State Medical Board and demanded answers. The board, which had spent more than a decade ignoring complaints about Burt, now found itself under the direct scrutiny of the state's chief executive, and suddenly they moved. On December 9th, 1988, the Ohio State Medical Board formally charged Dr. James Burt with 41 separate offenses. The charges include gross immorality, grossly unprofessional conduct, excessive prescription of painkillers, performing unnecessary operations, and performing experimental and medically unnecessary surgical procedures in some instances without proper consent, causing sexual dysfunction, emotional turmoil, unnecessary corrective surgeries to numerous patients. So Bert was 67 years old when he was charged, and he expressed confidence that he would be exonerated. The board gave him 30 days to request a hearing, but he didn't request one. Instead, he made a calculated decision, perhaps one final act of self-preservation. On January 26, 1989, the Ohio State Medical Board approved a surrender revocation of Burt's medical license. He had proposed to relinquish it in the week of January 19. He stated that he had ceased all operations on January 12th. The stipulation was permanent. He was barred from practicing medicine anywhere in the United States. The surrender was a strategy. By voluntarily giving up his license, Bert ended the board's investigation. There would be no hearing, no testimony under oath, no compelled disclosure of records, no further evidence gathering. The full investigation was effectively closed. The man who had operated on thousands of women without their consent walked away without ever being forced to answer for it under oath before a regulatory body. In his statement, he maintained that his practice had adhered to state regulations and the ethical standards set by the American Medical Society. Or I'm sorry, American Medical Association. Blah blah blah. He didn't show any remorse and refused to acknowledge that there were any victims. He didn't cause any harm, guys. The civil courts became the only arena where Bert's victims could pursue any measure of accountability, and even there they received pushback from the systems. At the time of the licensed surrender, at least three malpractice lawsuits were pending, each seeking three million dollars. Attorney Lee Samble was representing 42 of the women. But many earlier cases had been dropped, not because they lacked merit, but because doctors would not testify against a colleague. The New York Times reported that the White Wall of Science silence around physician conduct made expert witnesses almost impossible to

Lawsuits, Bankruptcy, And No Criminal Case

SPEAKER_03 48:50

find. Bert had no malpractice in search insurance and had placed his assets in his wife's name, making any judgment effectively uncollectible. In the 12 years before the CBS broadcast, he had been sued 10 times and every suit was dropped. Janet Phillips did not drop her case. In April of 1986, she filed a comp a complaint in Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas, asserting medical negligence, fraud, and negligent credentialing against both BERT and Elizabeth Medical Center, St. Elizabeth Medical Center. Five years of litigation followed, and in July of 1991, a jury awarded Janet $5 million in compensatory damages against Burt on the fraud claim. This was a number that made national news, but unfortunately it was largely symbolic, like it often is, because he had no insurance and no assets, so collection was nearly impossible. The cases also produced landmark Ohio law. Browning vs. Burt decided the Ohio Supreme Court in 1993, establishing that the negligent credentialing claims against hospitals carry a two-year statute limitations and that hospitals are not immune from liability for negligently granting staff privileges to incompetent physicians. The dresser versus Burt decided in 1996, further refined the legal framework. These rulings changed Ohio law permanently, and in 1991, Burt filed for bankruptcy, overwhelmed by the lawsuits totaling 21 million in claims. He and Joan divorced, because I'm sure she was no longer draped in diamonds, and he filed a 250 million libel suit against CBS because the producer, reporter, patient, and Dr. Busako had called him Frankenstein on the broadcast. In April 1991, a federal judge dismissed the suit. Even in defeat, Bert could not stop performing. In 1994, he publicly announced plans to launch a foundation dedicated to make love surgery and accepted medical practice. He claimed many satisfied patients and asserted he was being copied by expert plastic surgeons. Yeah. No criminal charges were ever filed against him. Not one. Isn't that wild to think about? That a physician who performed unauthorized experimental surgeries on thousands of women over two decades, surgeries that caused permanent physical and psychological devastation, and no prosecutor in the state of Ohio ever brought him to trial. Police and prosecutors declined to pursue criminal charges. The explanation, as described by investigators, is systemic. In medicine, the harm occurs when patients are unconscious. There are no witnesses in the traditional sense. The legal standard is difficult to meet when defense teams can argue medical judgment and when no other physicians will testify. Bert moved around after losing his license. He eventually relocated to Florida, where where they usually go, and he lived quietly there. He died on July 10th, 2012, in Dayton, Ohio, at 90 years old. He died without ever facing a criminal courtroom. Isn't that crazy? That is not so. His son, James Burt III, issued a statement to ABC News that year saying, there are hundreds and hundreds of Dr. Burt's patients alive today, whose marriages and lives were dramatically improved by his wholesome restoration to their fully functional sexual responsiveness. Okay. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 52:30

Apple tree. Yeah. Didn't far didn't fall far from the tree.

SPEAKER_03 52:34

He said that there would be no further comment from the family. St. Elizabeth Medical Center eventually closed, damaged in part by the financial and reputational consequences of the litigation. In the aftermath, the Ohio State Medical Board reorganized. It received more funding, more investigators. By some accounts, it became a model for what state medical boards should be. But the fundamental problem that the people responsible for the mission of patient protection must actually believe in that mission has never fully been solved. Boards are still composed of physicians. Hospitals still weigh revenue against accountability, and the offensive structures that allowed Bert to operate for 22 years have been reformed but not dismantled. Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizens Health Research Group, said it best in 1991 It's a disgrace to all of medicine. His procedures were several standard deviations from what is acceptable. And only now people who should have spoken up 20 years ago, slowly, timidly coming out of the closet. For 20 years they knew, and for those 20 years they said nothing. And Janet Phillips also said something once that captures the core of this entire story. She said, quote, You're brought up to trust your minister, your police officer, and your doctor. He was the one with the diploma on the wall. He understood medicine better than I did. I never imagined he would cause me harm. End quote. That trust, the trust that patients place in their physicians, the trust that women place in the men who hold authority over their bodies, is the most valuable thing in medicine. It is the foundation without which nothing works. And James Burt took that trust and used it as a weapon. He used it to isolate women, to silence them, to operate on bodies while they were unconscious, to reshape them according

The Cost Of Silence In Medicine

SPEAKER_03 54:26

to his own ideology of what a woman should be. Cheryl Sexton Dillon is still living with the consequences. So are hundreds of other women whose names we may never know. The surgeries cannot be fully undone, and the years cannot be returned. The marriages cannot be reassembled. But we can say their names and we can tell their stories, and we can refuse to let the silence return.

SPEAKER_01 54:49

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 54:51

Amen. I have so many questions, but first and foremost, what was his motivation to do this? Like, was he getting paid?

SPEAKER_03 54:59

I just thought he was a genius. He was just like, I just thought he was a gift to women. I can approve them, improve the sex lives.

SPEAKER_02 55:07

And he found the perfect area because not only was it a time frame where and it still is a little bit like you can't, your doctor knows best, your surgeon knows best. But also, you don't question your surgeon. It's uncomfortable subject matter. You're not going to report stuff about your nether regions if you're, you know, you know, you're it's it's it's so difficult, all of it. So basically, this guy was able to go around and mutilate women for 22 years without any repercussions, which really, really, really I find absolutely devastating. I'm just so upset about this. I mean, a lot of times you just think, well, especially, you know, you go in for something, you're out of it, you go give birth or whatever, and yeah, they had to stitch you up or whatever. Well, your mind was on something else because you just had a baby or you just had a hysterectomy, and they say, well, it's gonna take a while to heal. I mean, it's not like we go around with a spotlight and a mirror downstairs to go, well, that doesn't look the same. Like I would imagine that a lot of this unveiled over the years is like chronic pain and chronic infections and chronic misunderstanding of what had actually happened. He did he did thousands of women. Terrible, terrible, terrible things. I just this is horrible. I I hope this I'm just like I'm flapping like a fish out of water right now. I'm just hoping this is better now. Like, what's in place to make sure that this kind of thing doesn't happen anymore?

SPEAKER_03 56:43

Well, I mean, there's those laws that have been changed and kind of how the boards are organized. So I think I think things are are better. We're also what 50 years beyond this.

SPEAKER_02 56:54

But I also think the culture of safety is different. Like, I feel like nurses who know better are gonna speak up. People in the operating room are gonna be like, we don't need to take nine hours for his directomy. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_03 57:07

Oh, can you imagine? This yeah, like our time in the operating room, they'd be like, Do you really need 120 minutes?

SPEAKER_02 57:14

It's like so I can't imagine. I can imagine them going, Well, is there a code for this? Yeah, because that's the other thing. I was like, was he billing for these little creative things he was doing? He couldn't have been.

SPEAKER_03 57:25

No, because there's no code for that.

SPEAKER_02 57:28

So he was just doing it out of his own god complex. Yeah. I'm gonna make women supposed supposedly better.

SPEAKER_03 57:35

Yeah. I mean, I think just now that we had mentioned that surgical scheduling alone, like that would never happen because they would never let you have an OR space that long. No. No, not for a hystericist, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:50

If you're gonna be a cash cow, you're gonna be the one who gets people in and out in less time than it should take. Absolutely. Yeah, it would be the opposite problem. Yeah. So yeah. Well, that was fascinating. Thank you for bringing that up. You're welcome. I'd never heard of that. Yeah. Yikes.

SPEAKER_03 58:08

Let's move on to sponsor number two because honestly, I'm just grossed out by James Fort. Ladies, I don't know who needs to hear this, but your sports bra should not be your greatest enemy. You should not have to wrestle yourself into it, nor should you need an engineering degree to get it off after a workout. You all know what I'm talking about. It's sweaty, it rolls, you're stuck, your arms over your head. No. Yeah. You definitely should not spend your entire workout adjusting it either. And that is why we are excited to be partners with Handful Activewear. We've talked about it before, we're here again. Handful designs activewear specifically for women, creating sports bras

Handful Activewear Sponsor Break

SPEAKER_03 58:51

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SPEAKER_02 59:24

Awesome. I'm wearing a handful bra right now. I would flash you, but this isn't the cute one.

SPEAKER_03 59:30

I'm like, actually, I'm I am too. Oh.

SPEAKER_02 59:36

Is it time for a medical mishap? It is. Well, this email starts. Hey Jenna and Amanda. First of all, thank you for the podcast. I work outside of healthcare, but I've always been fascinated by medicine and the strange ways things can go wrong. Your show has been part of my weekly routine, and after hearing so many stories, I finally decided to send one in of my own. This happened about 10 years ago. I'm completely fine now, but at the time I was convinced that something was catastrophically wrong. I had undergone what was supposed to be a routine orthopedic surgery on my knee. Nothing emergency related, nothing particularly dramatic. I mean, I was healthy, relatively young, and I expected to be home recovering within

Medical Mishap: Nerve Block Paralysis Scare

SPEAKER_02 1:00:23

a day. The surgery went smoothly. The surgeon was happy with the results, and then a PT came in later that day and asked me to stand, but I couldn't. Not because it hurt or because I was dizzy, but my legs simply wouldn't cooperate. Let's try again, said the PT. He looked confused. We tried again, same result. I could move my feet and wiggle my toes. I had feeling all the way through, but the second I tried to put weight on my legs, they felt like they belonged to someone else. The therapist assumed it was lingering anesthesia, and what do I know? So made sense to me. After all, bodies are weird after surgery, right? So we waited a few hours and then another therapist came by. I still couldn't stand. Now people are starting to look more concerned and ask more questions. I remember one nurse asking me to push against her hands with my feet, so I did. Lift your leg, so I did. And then the other, no problem. But the moment anyone tried to get me upright, my legs completely gave out. At this point, I'd gone from mildly concerned to mentally planning what my future would look like if I couldn't bear weight. The staff remained calm, which sounds nice, but it was a little too calm, if you know what I mean. I mean, I couldn't stand. Everyone kept saying, oh, well, let's give it more time. More time? How much time? Every hour that passed made this feel less and less like an anesthesia problem and more like a what the F is happening problem. Late that evening, a physician I hadn't met before came into the room. He reviewed everything and asked some more questions. And then he did something that no one else had done. He reviewed the anesthesia record from beginning to end. I remember him being so focused and going through all the notes with a fine tooth comb. He then asked everyone to leave the room for a few minutes, and I thought, great, this is where I learned my fate. I sat anxiously waiting for them to come back. And when they did, they explained it wasn't an issue with my knee at all. During the procedure, a regional nerve block had been used to help control postoperative pain. The problem was the problem was the block spread further than anticipated and was affecting more motor function than expected. The good news was I know. Okay, here you might be thinking you're paralyzed, but the writer says, Oh, the good news it wasn't permanent. The bad news was that no one realized what was happening. For nearly an entire day, everyone had been waiting for me to try harder to stand while my legs were still partially offline. I cannot adequately describe the relief in hearing I wasn't weak. I wasn't imagining things, I wasn't failing PT. There was an actual reason. But the next morning, the block finally wore off and I stood up and walked. I immediately started crying. Not from pain, but relief, because for 12 hours I genuinely believed I might never walk again. I would have figured it out, but I'll never take for granted again my ability to walk. Anyway, thanks for reminding people that when something feels wrong, it's okay to ask questions. Cheers, Barb. Oh, Barb. Wow, Barb.

unknown 1:03:40

Barb.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:41

Freaking out. Oh. And poor Barb, like planning what her future looks like if she were unable to walk again. Like how traumatic. I would have had tears of relief as well. I agree. You would have figured it out, but I'm glad you didn't have to. Oh yeah. Well, I still feel grouse, so what can we expect here next week?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:04

Well, next week we're gonna cover a case sir surrounding essential oils and unlicensed medical care. So do with that what you will, but you need to show up, listeners, because it's doozy. But meanwhile, don't miss a beat. Subscribe or follow Doctoring the Truth wherever you enjoy your podcast for stories that shock, intrigue, and educate. Trust, after all, is a delicate thing. You can text us directly on our website at doctorandruth at fubsprout.com. Email us your own story ideas and comments at Doctoringthe Truth at Gmail. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Doctoring the Truth Podcast

Next Week Tease And How To Connect

SPEAKER_02 1:04:47

and on Facebook at Doctoring the Truth. We're on TikTok at Doctoring the Truth and ed odd pod e-d A-U-D-P-O-D. Don't forget to download, rate, and review so we can be sure to bring you more content next week. Until then, stay safe and stay suspended.